Medical Bulletin 30/May/2023

Recently, in a study published in Nature Medicine Japanese researchers present a novel assay that can efficiently detect α-synuclein seeds from a patient’s serum.

Reference:

Propagative α-synuclein seeds in the serum of patients with synucleinopathies,Nature Medicine, DOI 10.1038/s41591-023-02358-9 

Underlying genetic risks for a type of heart attack largely affecting younger women revealed

Research led by the1 National Institute for Health and Care Research,2 Leicester Biomedical Research Centre and3 Universite Paris Cite, and supported by worldwide partners has identified new genes that are associated with an increased risk of a type of heart attack primarily affecting 4young to middle-aged women.

5SCAD – or Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection - is when a bruise or bleed occurs in the wall of a coronary artery, cutting off the blood to part of the heart. This leads to a heart attack. Unlike other types of heart attack, SCAD is most common in women under the age of 60 and is a leading cause of6 heart attacks around the time of pregnancy. Furthermore, people who have had a SCAD tend to be generally healthy and SCAD can sometimes happen more than once.

Reference:

Genome-wide association meta-analysis of spontaneous coronary artery dissection identifies risk variants and genes related to artery integrity and tissue-mediated coagulation,Nature Genetics,DOI 10.1038/s41588-023-01410-1